


You can't read it, but this paper says I'm a prince

by ChipAndDealer



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Badass Toph Beifong, Big Brother Sokka (Avatar), Bumi is Wise, Element discussion, F/M, Protective Sokka (Avatar), Sokka (Avatar)-centric, Sokka gets left behind when Katara finds the Avatar and has to go it alone, Toph Beifong-centric, Toph Being Awesome, Toph is the greatest earthbender in the world, but also crazy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24288418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChipAndDealer/pseuds/ChipAndDealer
Summary: Maybe this had gone too far, Sokka allowed, the firmest of fake smiles affixed to his face. Stealing was one thing, doing whatever it took to survive was another, and faking it till you made it had always been his number one motto, but maybe, maybe, this had gone too far.The Earth Kingdom mansion was practically plated in gold, the plants outside manicured into perfectly symmetrical shapes, and the accompanying servants wore impeccable clothing with manners to match. Sokka, on the other hand, had a smile, a suit that probably cost more than everything in his entire village, and the fervent hope that everything would turn out alright."Nice digs, huh?" Bumi, mad king of Omashu, elbowed him in the ribs, grinning. "Get it? Digs?"Bumi was there, too.
Relationships: Toph Beifong/Sokka
Comments: 14
Kudos: 128





	1. Sokka has Reservations

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAAAAAGH, I'VE GOT OTHER STORIES I SHOULD BE WRITING.
> 
> Please enjoy a few thousand words of tormenting my babies (pretty sure that describes all my stories).

Maybe this had gone too far, Sokka allowed, the firmest of fake smiles affixed to his face. Stealing was one thing, doing whatever it took to survive was another, and faking it till you made it had always been his number one motto, but maybe, maybe, this had gone too far.

The Earth Kingdom mansion was practically plated in gold, the plants outside manicured into perfectly symmetrical shapes, and the accompanying servants wore impeccable clothing with manners to match. Sokka, on the other hand, had a smile, a suit that probably cost more than everything in his entire village, and the fervent hope that everything would turn out alright.

"Nice digs, huh?" Bumi, mad king of Omashu, elbowed him in the ribs, grinning. "Get it? Digs?"

Bumi was there, too.

Lao Beifong strode confidently out of the mansion, attendants flocking around him on every side like a swarm of mosquito-ants. Sokka repressed a shudder. Creepy.

"King Bumi," he greeted, giving a respectful bow when he got close enough. "It is a great honor to have you here."

"I suppose it would have to be," Bumi answered, chuckling. "I walk from farm to city, all the way up and down this kingdom, yet still it's a great honor for me to be wherever I am at that moment. I guess that's the funny thing about honor: it never wears itself out. The only thing that can make it worthless is you." His chuckling graduated to cackling, as it tended to do with Bumi.

Lao shot Sokka a questioning look, but he could only shrug, helplessly. Just because he brought Bumi didn't mean he had to understand him.

"And, of course, you've already met my son," Bumi said suddenly, wrapping an arm around Sokka and pulling him forward.

Lao gave another bow. "Of course. Welcome to our humble home, your highness."

Sokka inclined his head, mumbling something back about how it was good to be there.

With the pleasantries one-eighth of the way dealt with, Lao invited them inside where they met his wife and had to start the whole thing over, substituting something equally crazy for what Bumi said before, of course.

"I understand that the Fire Nation is slowly turning its interests toward Ba Sing Se once more," Lao observed as servants divested Sokka and his would-be father of their coats. "With Omashu in the path, it's understandable to look for new friends."

"New friends are important," Bumi agreed. "Old friends more so, and family even more so than that. A good parent would do anything for their child, just as a devoted brother would travel to the ends of the earth for his sister. In the end, our path is forged by who we surround ourselves with."

Lao's brain seemed to stutter for a moment before he caught enough of what was said to make a segue. "Well, it's funny you mention family..."

This had all started so normally, too.

Sokka had a hook in his thumb. What? For him, that was normal. His methods for getting it out were less so.

Kanna tutted at the wound, and the three hooks within. "The day when you get your hands on a real weapon is the day I run away and join the Earth Kingdom," she muttered.

"Sokka?" Katara poked her head into the tent. "Are you ready to go fishi-" she spotted his injured hand and shot him a deadpan glare. "Really?"

"No fishing, today," Kanna said before Sokka could properly bristle.

"We need fish," Katara differed. "If Sokka can't do it, I'll just go out, myself."

"It's too dangerous," she answered, flatly. "The currents have been unpredictable lately. If your boat gets swept away, you could be lost at sea forever. We have enough fish to get through a few more days."

"Besides, Katara, who ever heard of a girl doing fishing by herself?" Sokka added, unnecesarily. "I'll be alright in a couple days. Just play with your magic water until then."

"I can fish ten times better than you," she shouted, wishing that slamming the tent flap closed made a bigger sound. "And it's called waterbending, you nut brained moron."

She stomped off in the snow, the sound of her leaving fading into the distance. At the time, Sokka hadn't even noticed it, his hand a greater, painful, priority.

Later on, though, when a giant light beamed into the sky, when firebenders attacked the village demanding the Avatar, when Katara still hadn't returned, he noticed it then. Katara was gone.

He tried to surrender himself as the Avatar to spare his village, but they didn't believe him. Before the teenager who seemed to be in charge could do anything drastic, however, an old man came behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Come on, Prince Zuko, look around you. The Avatar is not here."

Slowly, the anger etched on his face turning to despair, the boy accepted it, leaving without another word. Before the old man could do the same, Sokka called out to him. "My sister, Katara, have you-?"

The old man shook his head. "You are the first people we've seen in several weeks. I am sorry for the disturbance to your village." He gave a small bow, before leaving as well, the Fire Nation ship casting off into the freezing waters once more.

Within the hour, Sokka was doing the same, floating out into the ice to search for his sister. His tiny wooden ship was caught by a current, and before he knew it, he was swept out to sea.

After a few days at sea, Sokka really started to miss solid ground, well, as solid as ground got when you lived on ice, in any case. After a few days more, living on the seal jerky he'd packed alone, he began missing food more. A bad storm hit, his boat capsized, and he began missing even that.

It was a normal start. When he'd washed up on a beach in the Earth Kingdom was when it started to get strange.

He woke up to... music, he guessed. Though, the lyrics and medley left a lot to be desired. "Stranger on the beach, oh yeah, clinging to life like a leech, gotta keep death out of reach, for this stranger on the beach."

He rose, slowly, clutching his head in a vain effort to stop the pounding within.

"Hey, hey, the beach boy's awake, everyone," the... musician announced, worsening Sokka's headache, then playing more music to truly cement his apparent hatred. "Beach boy out of bed, something wrong with his head, pain so bad he probably wishes he were dead."

"Please stop," Sokka begged, groaning.

"Oh, the beach boy talks," the musician said, far too chipper. He stopped playing for a moment, though, so Sokka counted that as a victory.

Slowly, he opened his bleary eyes, taking in the inside of a carriage. It was funny, after spending that long on a boat, then decidedly not on a boat, he hadn't even noticed the ground moving under him. "Where am I?"

The musician considered the question for a moment. "Hang on, I'll check." He stuck his head outside the carriage. "Hey, Lily, where are we?" He asked.

"Here," a woman, apparently Lily, answered.

"Oh." He brought his head back in. "We're here."

Sokka barely, barely, managed to restrain himself from slapping a hand to his forehead and bringing new pain his headache had yet to explore.

The man's name was Chong and he, along with his wife and a collection of others, were Earth Kingdom nomads who apparently had enough time on their hands to faff about and sing songs even though there was a war going on. On the other hand, as Sokka looked over the group, he had to admit that adding them into an army would probably do more harm than good. Unless the Earth Kingdom needed torturers, of course. Chong's lute was all the tools he needed to accomplish that feat.

Suffice it to say, while he appreciated their help, he became a solo nomad at the first town they passed through.

He earned a few coins for travel by fixing a few of the townspeople's broken furniture, he didn't really see what the big deal in whittling a couple replacement parts and hammering them together was; he used to do that all the time back in his village. But, people seemed to appreciate it, so he finally ate something approaching a meal again, and, equally important, heard a rumor about his sister.

They said the Avatar was traveling with a little girl from the Water Tribe, that they'd stopped by Kyoshi island before heading toward Omashu, and they might still be there even now.

So, Sokka joined a merchant caravan heading to Omashu for new wares and taught them how the Southern Water Tribe made fishhooks. That went well. Then he taught them how he got the fishhooks out when they got stuck. That went less well. Still, before he knew it, he was in Omashu.

It was the biggest city he'd ever seen. Scratch that, it was the biggest anything he'd ever seen. It dwarfed the icebergs surrounding his village easily, reaching up until it practically touched the sky.

He heard from a few vegetable merchants on the inside that the Avatar and the Water Tribe girl had gone to see the king. When he'd pressed further, they'd added that the Water Tribe girl looked sad, but in good health. Sokka thanked Tui for small favors.

So that's how he found himself outside the castle of one of the great Earth Kingdom cities, a little Water Tribe boy demanding an audience with the King. There was no earthly reason the request should have been granted.

But this was the mad King Bumi.

Sokka approached the throne, the sounds of his footsteps echoing in the too-wide room. When he got as close as he dared, he dropped into a kneel. "Your majesty." The merchants who knew he was going to see the King had decided a few sudden lessons were in order that Sokka had listened to as much as possible. "My name is Sokka. I'm from the Southern Water Tribe. I'm here because I'm looking for my sister, Katara. I'd heard there's a girl from the Water Tribe traveling with the Avatar and I thought-"

The King cut him off with a laugh. "No need to be so formal, Sokka. You're talking to me, not the floor." Sokka raised his head, rising unsteadily from the ground as the King continued. "You've heard correctly. The Avatar did come to see me, and the Water Tribe girl he was with was named Katara, if I remember right. Is that a very common Water Tribe name?"

"No," Sokka nearly choked on his words, his chest feeling suddenly so much lighter. "No, it isn't." He wiped his eyes, breathing for a moment before asking. "Do you know where's she's going?"

Bumi tapped his hands together. "Yes and no," he hedged. "Your sister is with the Avatar, racing to learn the four elements in order. Right now, their destination is to the Northern Water Tribe to learn waterbending, but even with my fastest ships, you'd be hard pressed to beat them there."

Sokka shrugged, helplessly. "Then, what should I do?"

"Are you familiar with earthbending?" Bumi asked.

Sokka scratched the back of his head, confusedly. "I'm... from the Water Tribe?"

Bumi chuckled. "The other elements focus on going places, through, around, under, but earth persists better than anything else. It waits, and listens. So, I've given you all the information I have. Now you just have to put it together. Think like an earthbender."

Sokka began to pace, hand on his chin as he considered aloud. "Well, the ships we have right now aren't fast enough, so we just need faster ships."

"A classic firebender thought," Bumi noted. "If power is the problem, then power must also be the solution, hmm? But few fires burn long, just as few firebenders consider the future. With even the most ingenious of plans, how soon do you think you could procure a faster ship? How much time would you lose in doing so?"

Sokka slapped a hand to his forehead. "Darn it. I didn't even think about that." Bumi gave an encouraging nod and Sokka tried again. "If I really think about it, I don't need a whole boat all to myself, I just need one I know is going to the Northern Water Tribe. Those firebenders at my village; they were after the Avatar. If I can sneak aboard their ship, they'll take me right to my sister."

Bumi laughed, the sound filling the enormous hall. "Ah, so you're from the Water Tribe after all. Taking your opponent's strength and turning it to your advantage is quintessential waterbender. Only..." he hummed, standing. "If you were caught," he stomped his foot and Sokka sunk partway into the floor, rooted instantly, "what would you do then?"

He struggled, futilely pounding at the unmoving stone. "I don't know," he shouted, exasperatedly. "If I can't do that, I'd do something else; find some other way to get there."

He sunk further. "Now you're thinking like an airbender, always another angle, always a way out. What if there's no way out?" He was up to his waist now. "Think, Sokka. You've come up with three ideas, you could probably think of a dozen more, but time is running out. Every second, your sister gets further and further away. What will you do?"

"I'm trying to think, I'm trying, but there's no time" The stone was up to his waist. He couldn't even feel his lower body anymore. "There isn't an answer. Anything I can come up with would take too long. By the time I got to the Northern Tribe, they'd already have moved on to find an earthbending teacher. I'd be better off doing nothing at all and just waiting for them to come back."

He stopped sinking. With a stomp of the king's foot, Sokka had risen out of the ground once more and Bumi was clapping him on the back. "Now you're thinking like an earthbender. Hungry? I don't know about you, but I've worked up quite the appetite."

Sokka stumbled after him, still getting the feeling back in his legs. In any case, priorities were in order: food first, questions later.

Earth Kingdom food was weird, but it was also meat, so good enough, he guessed. He ended up putting more salt on everything than was strictly necessary, too used to dried and salted meats he had on his journey. But once he'd packed away enough food for a few harrowing trips through the sea and land, Bumi finally spoke again.

"What will you do, once you find your sister and the Avatar?" He asked, scooping a few varieties of jelly onto a single piece of toast.

"Well, once they come back here, the Avatar will need an earthbending teacher, and since Katara and I aren't earthbenders, I figure we'll just go home." He hadn't really thought about it, but that seemed to make the most sense.

"Ah, my mistake," Bumi apologized.

"What?" That came out of nowhere.

Bumi shrugged, taking a bite of his toast. "Here, I thought you wanted to save the world."

Sokka choked on his food, hacking up a piece of possum-chicken before he could respond. "Uh, you might need your eyes checked, buddy. I'm too young to go off to war, I can't bend, I weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet, and the one time I actually got the chance to fight a firebender I got my tuckus well and truly handed to me. This was a teenager, by the way, not even a full grown man. I got dragged out to sea by the current, nearly drowned in a storm, and the only reason I got here was because I managed to hitch a ride with nomads and traders. To top it all off, my brilliant plan to save my sister is to wait for her to be done with all the dangerous stuff while I lounge around in the Earth Kingdom. So, it doesn't really matter what I want, does it? I can't save diddly." He pushed the plate away, staring down at it as his appetite curled and died.

"That reminds me of a joke," Bumi responded, cheerily.

"My dreary, hopeless, self-evaluation reminds you of a joke?" Bumi nodded, so Sokka sighed, giving in. "Let's hear it."

Bumi didn't tell a joke. Bumi told five jokes, all at the same time, trampling over each other in quite possibly the most rambling story Sokka had ever heard.

"So then he picks up the weasel-bat, and chucks it right at the mayor, screaming, 'that's what I call airbending,'" he finished, triumphantly, chortling. Sokka couldn't help but do the same. When they were both out of breath, Bumi idly wiped a tear, sighing. "Eh, but that was Aang, for you. Even among other airbenders, you could never keep him down. It took my father all he had to keep the mayor from running us out of town with torches and pitchforks."

Sokka's brain stuttered to a stop. "Wait, so that story was real? That actually happened to you?"

"That's just one story. Aang, Kuzon, and I had a remarkable habit of getting ourselves into trouble, and an even more remarkable lack of skill in getting out of it," he smiled fondly, toying with a chopstick. "Of course, that was a long time ago. Kuzon died in a mine collapse and Aang disappeared before the war even began. Never thought I'd see him again, but I did, once."

"He came back?" Sokka asked, genuinely curious.

Bumi cracked a mischievous smile. "Yep. Walked through that door right there, only a few days ago, not looking a minute older than when I last saw him."

Sokka's brow furrowed. "An airbender a few days ag- you're not saying your friend Aang is the Avatar?"

"In the flesh," Bumi revealed. "An incident with an iceberg apparently froze him for a hundred years until your sister released him. He's alone, he's scared, and he's younger than you."

Sokka bit his lip, looking away.

"You look at what you've done and see only failure, but I see different. You've fought a firebender alone, without any bending at all, and survived. You were dragged out to sea, nearly drowned in a storm and still managed to make your way to Omashu, befriending nomads, villagers, and traders along the way. You're a lone boy from the Southern Water Tribe, too young to go off to war, yet you found yourself given an audience by a King." Sokka considered the words, feeling a weight in his chest lift. "As for your plan, I never suggested you spend your time in the Earth Kingdom lounging..."

On paper, it couldn't have been more simple: Aang would need an earthbending teacher, Sokka would find him one to save him the trouble.

It was the execution where things got sticky.

"Why can't you just teach him earthbending, yourself?" Sokka asked, grunting as he set a stack of ledgers on the table. "You seemed to be pretty good when you had me sinking into the floor."

Bumi hummed, smiling fondly at the memory of just a few hours before. "Hmm, yes, I really was, wasn't I? But no, as much as I'd enjoy being Aang's teacher, it wouldn't work. I may act beyond it, but I am an old man, set in stone. The Avatar is a diamond, you and your sister ice, you need someone different than old slate to join you, less... opaque."

Sometimes, Sokka wished he understood what Bumi was talking about.

As Bumi began going through the ledgers, making adjustments with the smallest paintbrush Sokka had ever seen, it took a surprisingly long time for him to ask, "What are all these for, anyway?"

Bumi dipped his brush again and began editing another line. "How familiar are you with hunting, young Sokka?"

"My dad taught me, actually. Mostly, we get our food from fish, but even out on the ice there's some animals." His eyes strayed to the window, where birds flicked about through the sky. "Not like here, but a few."

"In hunting, there are tracks: footprints in the dirt, in the snow, broken twigs and disturbed grass, to hunt, you follow this trail. Paper is the same, and with it you can track anything from how many nuts a merchant a few villages away has sold, to the location of every soldier in the Earth Kingdom army. But, there are other similarities between the two, as well. Just as you can make sure not to leave obvious tracks, or cover up the ones you've made already, you can do the same with careful positioning and a few bits of knowledge."

Sokka scratched his head. "But, I don't get it. What could you have to cover up?"

"Actually, I'm not covering up anything at all," Bumi admitted. "I'm employing the age-old strategy one makes when he wants to become the hunter instead of the hunted: I am making a false trail."

Sokka didn't understand it. None of the edits he did seemed to make any sense. But then he took a step backward, contracts for midwifery, fees for tutors, changing the numbers for food orders, for dishes, making them bigger just slightly. Bumi created a trail, a path to a person that didn't exist.

With a few strokes of a brush, Prince Sokka of Omashu was born.

It wasn't being swept out to sea, or picked up by the nomads, wasn't even meeting a king that made him wonder; it was Bumi handing him a card with the Omashu crest, falsely identifying him as royalty that Sokka thought maybe, just maybe, this had gone too far.

"With this, you should be able to go pretty much anywhere in the Earth Kingdom without much issue," he stroked his beard, thoughtfully. "Hmm, just to be safe, you might want to stay out of Ba Sing Se unless absolutely necessary. The Dai Li aren't as impressed with fancy paperwork as you might hope."

Sokka put questions on who or what the 'Dai Li' were on the back burner, focusing instead on, "Wait, I'm going out in the Earth Kingdom alone?"

Bumi shrugged. "Why not? You've done it before." A wave of his hand easily cut off Sokka's fresh round of protestations. "Oh, relax. I'm not going to be abandoning you. I'm just sending you out looking for earthbenders. If you find one you think would make a good teacher for the Avatar, send a messenger and I'll be there as soon as I can, to help with the evaluation," he considered a moment, "and payment, I suppose, if needed. Don't go to the front lines or Ba Sing Se and it's perfectly safe." He shrugged. "You know: probably."

"But shouldn't you find the finest swordsmen in the Earth Kingdom to train me or something?" Sokka hadn't even left the palace yet and he felt distinctly exposed.

Bumi tsked the idea away. "Even if we had the time to do that, which we don't, what makes you think we can just send away for the finest swordsmen if we can't do the same for the finest earthbender? This isn't about power, anyway, stop thinking like a firebender so much."

No training. No backup. No magic sword because it was dangerous to go alone. Sokka got a pat on the back, a sack of coins, and a princely card, then he was off.

For anyone playing along at home, the Earth Kingdom is big. The smallest mountains were twice the size of the biggest glaciers in the Northern Water Tribe, and there were farms bigger than the patch of ice his village had settled on. Sifting through it to find a capable earthbender was like looking for a teardrop in snow.

And yet.

Her name was the Blind Bandit.


	2. The Mad Prince of Omashu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's kind of weird how rarely people talk about Toph before the Gaang come along, because she's basically got a secret superhero identity, hiding all her cool earthbender-ness from her parents. I don't wanna overplay it, but Toph is Avatar's Spiderman.

There was something particularly irritating about the days Toph had taken to calling 'suitor days'. Primp, pluck, curl, tease, then sit through an endless reminder of protocol and decorum, she could firmly say it was the worst. Then she'd actually have to meet the poor noble brat her parents had dug up and, by some miracle of the spirits, the day would get even worse. Why was it they always confused blind with deaf?

"We're just not convinced an arrangement would work out. My son requires strong heirs and we're unsure your daughter is of the right... stock." It was incredible how wet and slimy someone who was supposed to bend earth could sound.

Suitor days also followed a predictable horribleness scale, with the more important the suitor meaning the more horrible the day. So when the next suitor day rolled around and she was told the Prince of Omashu was coming, she was decidedly less than enthused.

"Didn't even know there was a stupid prince of Omashu," she grumbled to herself while her attendants worked.

They gossiped, because apparently they also decided she was deaf, but it was better than sitting in silence while they pulled her hair and scrubbed her cheeks, trying to get her presentable.

"I saw the prince in the market, yesterday," one of them revealed, to the trite 'oohs' and 'ahs' of the assembled. "He was looking at one of old woman Kai-Si's bags."

One of them scoffed, lightly. "Those ugly things? He didn't buy one, did he?"

She giggled. "Nope. Just went back and forth on buying it until she had to close up for the day."

Wouldn't indecisiveness be a horrible trait for a future king? Toph mused.

"Wait, if you saw him, is he really...?" The attendant trailed off, earning an eyebrow raise from the girl she was currently attempting to comb the hair of. They gave up asking how she kept getting sticks and leaves tangled up there long ago.

"Oh, he is," the loud one confirmed. "That's how I knew it was him in the first place. We don't get a lot of that color up here."

Toph furrowed her brow. What were they talking about?

"What's the story with that?" Another one joined in, apparently also having some bit of information Toph didn't.

The Bei-Fong heiress wrinkled her nose. Ugh, colors. So annoying.

"I'll bet you it's the first thing the Master asks when the King comes in," the loud one answered and Toph tuned out the chatter with a sigh as it slowly devolved into topics even less comprehensible.

After they'd done all they could with her appearance and left the rest to the spirits, Toph was shuffled away to a side room to await being summoned. Sometimes she felt more like a servant in the house than the servants probably did.

As her father began his usual talk of the war and how important alliances were, Toph silently ran through what was most likely the scene about to follow.

'Please, accept my flesh and blood daughter as a bribe for political gain,' her father would say.

'Now what is this? I wanted a functional wife. This one is obviously broken,' the prince and/or king would reply.

'My daughter is a gentle soul, with earthbending ability you can pass down to your heirs. Please take the bribe,' her father would insist.

'Unacceptable. We've already eaten your food. Now it's time to leave.' Then they'd leave, and all the primping and preparing would be wasted on a meeting not ten minutes long.

Suitor days were the worst.

"It's funny you mention family," her father said as she stood up straighter, preparing for her entrance. "I actually have a daughter, about your son's age, and as of yet not promised to anyone." He waved a hand and the doors opened for Toph to slowly walk into the room. "I took the liberty of having some friends look into you and it seems your son has no promised either."

"Aren't coincidences fun?" The King asked, rhetorically.

"I just got a great idea," the Prince said, standing suddenly. Toph felt her stomach squirm like she'd eaten something rotten. Here was the grand exit. That might actually be a record. "Why don't I go for a walk in the garden with your daughter while you and my dad talk about how great being rich is."

The King clapped his hands. "A splendid idea. What do you say, Lao?"

Toph blinked. This was new.

Flabbergasted, himself, her father gave an agreement and some brief warnings on staying safe before letting her leave with the Prince.

The gardens were the same as ever: walled, safe, boring. Adding the Prince made no difference. "The name's Sokka, by the way," he said, holding out a hand. "We didn't really get to make introductions, before."

"Toph." She took it. "Your family's a bit strange, no offense."

He laughed, good-naturedly. "You have no idea."

She raised an eyebrow, but wasn't quite sure how else to respond. Honestly, this was the farthest she'd gotten in any of these suitor visits. She was tempted to fall back on her Earth Rumble experience, which meant mocking him and throwing him over the wall, probably. But her parents would definitely not like that.

"You're an earthbender, right?" Sokka asked next, leaning over to a rose, then cursing when his hand accidentally slipped inside the brambles and he got stuck by a dozen or so thorns. "Who puts knives on a plant?"

She could tell him she was an earthbender, right? It's not like it was a secret, and he couldn't connect that back to the Blind Bandit even if he'd heard of her, because why would a Prince be watching underground earthbending tournaments? "I'm the bes-" tone it down? "I'm an earthbender. Yep, that's right." After a moments thought, she added. "Do they not have rosebushes in Omashu?"

He shrugged, wrapping a handkerchief around his hand. "I don't know. Maybe they do and I just haven't seen 'em."

Toph nodded, sympathetically. His life was probably as sheltered as hers was. But, if that was the case, maybe he had a secret, too: some way to blow off steam like Earth Rumble. "What about you? Earthbender?" Nearly all the Earth Kingdom royalty and nobility were.

"Not an earthbender," he denied, coolly. "Not a waterbender or firebender either." Then he paused, and added. "Guess I have to say I'm not an airbender now, huh?"

Her eyebrows furrowed. "Huh?" What was he on about now? She'd heard King Bumi was crazy, but she never thought it'd be hereditary.

"Since the Avatar's back? He's an airbender?" Well, he wasn't lying. Probably still crazy, though.

"Oh yeah?" Smile and nod, Toph, just smile and nod.

"It was hard for me to believe at first, too." He sighed. "I haven't even seen him, but..." he motioned to a marble bench, sitting down on it a moment after. "Can I tell you about my sister?" He smiled. "She's the worst."

Toph sat down as Sokka told her about Katara, about her magic water and furious temper, about her teasing him while he tried to rally the younger kids, her always helping no matter how unpleasant the job was, and how she found the Avatar and went on a trip across the world to learn waterbending.

"After that, they're going to come to the Earth Kingdom looking for an earthbending teacher, so I've been all over, looking for one to help them," he continued, sounding dreadfully tired.

The story didn't make a lot of sense. Not only was the Avatar in it, which was impossible, but also his sister was a waterbender? Toph had never heard of the Prince of Omashu, but she knew Omashu was in the Earth Kingdom, and there would have been some kind of scandal if King Bumi married someone from the Water Tribe. She didn't know why, exactly, it had something to do with how people looked, which she couldn't care less about, but there would definitely have been gossip if that had happened.

Besides that, he talked about hunting, fishing, doing laundry, and teaching kids? None of those seemed like very princely activities. He wasn't lying, but...

No, it was fair to say, Prince Sokka was off his rocker.

"Then I saw you," he continued.

Aw, crud. She hadn't been paying attention. What was he talking about now?

"I've done this so many times, all over the Earth Kingdom, but you're the first one I really thought could go all the way." He laughed, almost like he couldn't believe it. "I thought the old man was crazy, but I think I finally see what he means. All those others are like old slate, or little pebbles you can kick by the side of the road, but you're more like... jade."

Toph felt heat rise up her collar, prickling her ears. Why did it have to be the crazy one? She'd never been all that concerned with the mushy gushy romance stuff her parents had talked about, but once or twice she'd privately considered it might feel good to hear.

It did feel good to hear.

"Excuse me," one of the servants interrupted. "Your Highness, Lady Beifong, your presence is requested inside."

Sokka rose with a stretch. "Guess they're done talking." He didn't offer to help her inside, though whether that was from rudeness or the correct assumption she could navigate her own backyard, she wasn't sure.

Sokka and the King bid their goodbyes, thanking the Beifong family for the meal and assuring them they would return the following day. When they finally departed, Toph and both her parents let out a collective sigh, like they'd all been holding in a breath too long.

She sent a curious look in their direction. Did they find suitor days just as exhausting as she did? She dismissed the thought a moment after, though. This was her parents, she was talking about. Anyone who could get that worked up over primping and decorum had to love little dinner parties like that.

"You were out in the garden for a while," her father commented. "Did you..." he hesitated. "How did the Prince seem to you?"

'Crazy,' was what she wanted to say. "Nice," she said, instead. "Maybe that was just because he stuck around long enough to talk, though."

He sighed, the action carrying a sad undercurrent. "This must be hard for you, all this rejection."

It took a discipline forged in steel not to show anger as white hot rage surged through her at the words. This is what she was to him? Her whole life hinging on a yes or no answer from someone else? No control? Oh, he'd like that.

'I don't need your pity,' she wanted to scream. 'I'm the best earthbending in the world.' But the words didn't come, syllables dying on her tongue. "Do you think they're really coming back tomorrow?" She asked instead, voice impossibly dry.

"I hope so," he whispered.

They didn't come back tomorrow. They didn't come back the day after, or the day after that.

Toph didn't mind. Suitor days always ended the same way. Why would she expect this one to go any differently? She didn't expect it to be different, so she wasn't surprised when they disappeared.

She was fine.

She kicked a stone into the air, bouncing it off wall after wall that rose where she commanded. She didn't need some crazy prince dropping sappy lines and whisking her away, somewhere.

The stone was crushed into powder and she set about slamming two of the previously erected walls together, testing which would break first. In the end, all these suitor days meant nothing. Soon enough, she'd show her parents that she wasn't the frail little kid they thought she was. She didn't need anyone else for that.

The wall on the left crumbled and she summoned another, then another when it crumbled again. She didn't need someone filling her head with impossible stories, talking about waterbending sisters and Avatars back from the dead.

Both walls shattered at the same time, spraying her in dust. She didn't need him.

A sparring partner might have been nice, though.

She left the badgermole cave she'd been practicing in, dusting herself off with a clap of her hands and beginning the slow descent down the mountain.

She could feel a figure closeby, creeping in the underbrush, and a stomp of her feet had it sinking into the ground.

"Aw, man. Gotta say, I'm getting real tired of earthbenders doing that to me." Sokka?

A simple stomp pulled him out of the ground. "What are you doing here?" She asked, accusatorily.

"Bumi's been kidnapped," he blurted out, panicked.

She backed up a step. "What?"

"After we left your house, a bunch of earthbenders dropped a metal cage on King Bumi and dragged him away. I'd been tracking them for a couple days, but they went inside a mountain and I need an earthbender to follow them." He was shouting so loud Toph could barely parse the words, but she got the general sentiment.

King captured. Need earthbender.

"There has to be tons of earthbenders you could have grabbed, from here and Omashu. Why pick me?" She didn't need him.

"I already told you why." He needed her.

"Half the stuff you say doesn't make any sense at all," she admitted. Slowly, a grin lit her face, and the quiet, demure, Toph Beifong fell away, the Blind Bandit taking its place. "But you picked right, Nutso." She jabbed a thumb at herself, smiling cockily. "I'm the greatest earthbender in the world."

For all they might have thought of themselves, the would-be royal ransomers were not earthbenders. No style, no power, no skill, there was no way Toph could acknowledge them as practicing the same art.

Fighting big showmen in the Earth Rumble arena was fun, but there was something distinctly freeing about tearing the side of the mountain off and feeling a bunch of thugs scurry away like elephant-rats.

One of them was different, though.

He shot a rock toward her, she thought, but when she moved to bat it aside, it smashed into her hand. Cold. Ice. "You're a waterbender."

"You didn't honestly think one of those rockheads could come up with a plan to capture the King of Omashu, did you?" He asked, tauntingly, rising up in the water so she couldn't feel where he was standing.

Sokka moved to the side, silently. She wasn't quite sure how dark it was, but she knew it was night simply by the time it took to get there. If she distracted the waterbender enough, Sokka could break the King out.

She cracked her knuckles. Of course, beating the snot out of him would be the best distraction. She stomped a pillar of stone out of the ground and began shooting it toward him in sections. She couldn't tell exactly where he was, but she could feel where the water covered the ground, and hear him grunt when one of the stones landed.

"Aim's not so good anymore?" He tutted, firing a barrage of icicles she slammed a wall up to avoid. "Poor blind girl can't see me when I'm off the ground? Well, I can see plenty."

A splash of water passed the wall to land on her cheek. She didn't even have enough time to widen her eyes before it froze, sizzling frostbite into her skin. Grabbing a handful of rocks and molding them into a mask over her face and arms to prevent him trying the same trick again, she began firing a new barrage of stone walls toward his general location. "Never fought a waterbender before. They all talk as much as you?"

"Oh, don't worry. You'll never fight a waterbender agai-" he grunted in pain as she slammed a pillar toward the sound of his voice, connecting solidly, but he wrapped himself in an ice shield to block the followup, wriggling out of the stone cage she tried to make for him. "Clever little girl, but not clever enough."

A powerful blast of water knocked her backward, slamming into a tree. If she could see, she was sure her vision would be blurry. As the water seeped into her clothes, he yanked backward, finally toppling her balance before she covered herself entirely in a rocky shell, cutting off the water's pull. "That has a kick to it," she grumbled, standing up before a stronger blast shot her back again.

"Courtesy of the full moon," he revealed, icing the water covering her, then cracking it to splinter away her armor. "My waterbending's stronger than it's ever been, and I can see your friend trying to bust out the King in the moonlight, perfectly." He formed the water into an icy spear and shot it towards Sokka, hearing a pained gasp from the Prince a moment after.

"If you'd brought along the town guard, those pathetic Earth Rumble wrestlers, or even a mob of villagers with sticks, you might have had a shot against me." He iced his leg and spun with the water into a kick against her unprotected arm. Toph winced at the definite bruise and possible fracture it caused. "But you fight me during the full moon with a nonbender and a pitiful blind little girl." He grabbed her by the neck and lifted her off the ground, her earth sense disappearing as her feet were forcibly raised. "Who do you think you are?"

There was a terrific crash as Sokka smashed the ice spear the waterbender intended to skewer him with into the back of his head. On instinct, he dropped Toph to avoid the followup strike, using the water to push himself to the side. "Do you want to tell him?" Sokka asked her, the smile he was wearing evident in his voice. "Or should I?"

The waterbender spun to attack again before the water wriggled and fell lifeless on the ground. "What?"

"He oughta know," Toph answered, raising up the biggest chunk of rock she'd ever managed, and hollowing out a hole to trap him with it. "I am..."

"She is..." Sokka joined in.

"The greatest earthbender in the world," they shouted together, and she slammed the enormous rock down upon him, sealing him in stone. He'd have air enough, for a while, at least until she could get Xin Fu down there so he could turn in the bounty this guy no doubt had.

When the dust had settled, Sokka unsteadily moved his hands in the empty air before landing on Toph's shoulder and gripping it like a lifeline. "Did we get him?"

She shot him a bemused look. "Can't you tell?"

He shook his head. "No, it's crazy dark out. How can you-oh, right."

She rolled her eyes. "The guy already said it's a full moon, Sokka."

"Yeah, I meant to ask about that." Sokka acknowledged. "How did you get the moon to disappear?"

At first, she thought it was just him being crazy again, but after freeing King Bumi and trekking back to the village, it seemed they weren't the only ones to notice what was once a bright and romantic night suddenly turn red, then pitch black.

The moon returned a short time later, but Toph marveled at the event, nonetheless. "Do you think I can do it at will?" She asked, as they slowly walked back to the Beifong estate. "Now that'd be something, just, bam, no moon, whenever I want."

Sokka cradled one arm where the ice spear grazed him, his feet already exhausted from the trip. "How would you even know it worked?"

"You'd be there to tell me," she answered, offhandedly.

"Yeah," Sokka smiled at the blind earthbender. "Yeah, I guess I will be."


End file.
